


I'll only hurt you (if you let me)

by ThanksForListening



Series: Hair Ties and Lullabies [1]
Category: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Genre: (i wrote it thinking pre-relationship but thats because im a sucker for yearning), F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, but theres a little bit of the group dynamic at the beginning, mostly focuses on dinah and helena, you could read it as pre relationship or as them in a relationship i think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:26:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22874734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThanksForListening/pseuds/ThanksForListening
Summary: "Tears had their purpose, initially, but overall they were counterproductive, and she had a job to do. Crying in the face of pain would do nothing, so she vowed to never do it again, no matter how much she wanted to. And she didn’t.But damn if this didn’t hurt like a bitch."
Relationships: Helena Bertinelli & Dinah Lance, Helena Bertinelli/Dinah Lance
Series: Hair Ties and Lullabies [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1644340
Comments: 17
Kudos: 286





	I'll only hurt you (if you let me)

**Author's Note:**

> not 100% happy with this but i know i'm just gonna drive myself crazy if i keep trying to edit so here it is enjoy your yearning. also i don't think it needs trigger warnings because there's not really any graphic descriptions but if it does let me know and i'll add some. also i've never read a comic in my life so i was both intentionally vague and also making shit up so pls don't yell at me if i broke canon lol

Helena Bertinelli didn’t cry. 

That had been her first lesson. When she’d arrived, it was just about all she could do. He’d sat next to her, told her _you cry tonight, child, but tomorrow you take those feelings and you use them. Crying will get you nothing. Sadness will not help you. It is anger you want, anger you can use._ She nodded her head, cried herself to sleep, then woke up with a fury she’d never felt before. As she began training, she grew to understand that he was right. Tears had their purpose, initially, but overall they were counterproductive, and she had a job to do. Crying in the face of pain would do nothing, so she vowed to never do it again, no matter how much she wanted to. And she didn’t. 

But damn if this didn’t hurt like a bitch. 

“Can you just get it out already?” She yelled behind clenched teeth. Lying on the couch, she wanted to close her eyes, but she didn’t trust the frenzy around her not to lose their shit if she did. It was like they’d never seen a bullet wound before. 

“I’m trying,” Harley said, “but I’m also trying to not kill you in the process, so if you could just stop yelling at us, maybe it would go faster.”

“I’d stop yelling if you all could stop being babies and get this fucking bullet out of my fucking thigh!”

“Okay, let's all take a breath,” Renee said.

“I can’t take a breath, because there’s a bullet in my leg and you’re all too stupid to take it out!”

“Hey, watch who you call stupid, Robin Hood, because I could always just take my PhD and go.”

“Fine, leave! I’ll do it my-fucking-self,” Helena grumbled as she tried to sit up. She felt hands on her chest immediately, saw Renee and Dinah on either side of her pushing her back into the couch. “It’s a PhD in Psychology, dumbass, that doesn’t make you a fucking surgeon,” she mumbled as she laid back down. 

“Okay, this is insane,” Dinah sighed. “Harley, stop being dramatic and just try and get it out. Helena, you gotta calm the fuck down, because we can’t help you if you keep trying to fight us.”

“Yeah, you gotta relax,” Harley said, and Helena’s face must have matched the way she felt, because Harley held both hands up. “I’m talking from a strictly medical perspective, here,” she added. “It’s harder to get the bullet out when you’re all tense like this.”

“Well excuse me if I’m having trouble relaxing when there’s a _bullet in my fucking leg,_ ” she said, and she felt Dinah’s hands on her shoulder again. 

“H, look at me,” she said, “ignore her.” Helena turned toward her, and she smiled, and even though Helena could tell it was forced, it still made her feel warm, somehow. Unless, of course, that was just her body fighting off the foreign invader in the form of the bullet that was _still in her fucking leg._

“Woah, Crossbow,” Dinah said, and she wondered how she saw the anger in her without her having to say a word. “Eyes on me. What do you do to calm down normally?”

“She’s never calm,” Harley mumbled under her breath.

“Harley!”

“Well, it’s true!” 

“Just focus on the bullet wound, _please,_ ” Dinah asked her, and Helena could feel the exasperation coming off her. Somehow, by the time she turned back to face her, though, it was gone, replaced with a look that was both serious and calm, and just a little stressed. 

“I don’t know,” Helena answered her earlier question. 

“What do you do when we get back from missions, huh? What do you do then? To...decompress, or whatever?”

“I don’t know!” She yelled without meaning to. She felt and saw Dinah flinch, which made her more upset at herself than she was at Harley. “I listen to music, I guess,” she said in a much softer tone. 

Usually she didn’t mind silence, but she’d always had a soft spot for music. The men who raised her didn’t really do leisure time, but music had been their only exception. Sometimes they played it while they trained, anything from hip hop to Italian opera. Other times, usually when someone brought out a second bottle of wine, they’d break out the guitar and create it themselves. Outside of success in her training, it was the only thing that had made her feel anything but angry. 

“Good!” Dinah said, “That’s good. Where’s your phone? We’ll play some right now.” 

“Yeah, that might not be a possibility,” Renee said, and Helena forced herself to turn her head and look at the completely shattered phone Renee held in her hand. 

“That’s alright!” Dinah said in a tone that was way too cheery to be sincere. Helena looked back at her, saw her rummaging through her bag. “I’ll just play something from mine and—“

Helena gasped so loudly she felt as if she sucked the rest of the noise straight out of the apartment. The pain was blinding, white dots dancing around her eyes. “Jesus _fucking_ Christ,” she felt rather than heard herself say, and she finally had to shut her eyes because everything was too much and she didn’t think she could even breathe let alone—

The hand in her own grounded her. “It’s alright,” she heard, and even though she knew Dinah was right next to her, her voice still sounded miles away. “It’s alright.”

She heard the others speak, but none of their words were clear enough to make out. Everything was muffled, like she was underwater and they were all on land. She could feel herself breathing, and she knew each breath was too short but she couldn’t stop it and the voices got louder and it hurt so bad, got it hurt so _fucking bad_ and—

She stopped breathing when she heard her. Just for a second, before she forced herself to exhale. Her eyes were still shut but she didn’t need to see it to know what was happening: Dinah was sitting next to her, holding her hand, and she was singing. 

Helena didn’t know any of the words. She didn’t recognize the melody, either, but it didn’t matter. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard. It was slow and soft and gentle. She could hear the phrases, tried to breathe along with it. Tears stung at her eyes but she kept them at bay. 

She kept her eyes shut, even as she heard Harley exclaim “I got it!”, the first words from her or Renee to break through her fog. Dinah stopped singing, and she forced her eyes open to look over at her. 

She was smiling, and if she hadn’t been lying there with an open wound, the sight would have been enough to make her smile, too. She tried to speak, but she didn’t trust herself to open her mouth and not let tears out, so she kept looking at Dinah, trying to thank her without words. 

“You see, if you had just calmed down when I told you to, that would have gone a lot faster,” Harley said as she began to stitch the wound, and as much as she didn’t want to take her eyes off Dinah, she forced herself to glare at Harley long enough to flip her off. 

“I’m gonna go check on Cass.” Helena’s face must have reflected her confusion, because Renee elaborated. “We locked her in Dinah’s room when they got here,” she explained. “I think you were too busy screaming every swear word known to man to notice.”

Oh. The thought of Cass hearing all that, hearing her pain and anger, brought her closer to tears than the bullet wound itself. Dinah had told her about when she’d first met Cass, about the foster parents who were always yelling awful things at each other, and now she’d had to listen to her do the same thing to Harley, to the others, and she had to look up at the ceiling because if she didn’t she was going to break her own rule and all that would do was make everything worse. 

“With the way she blasts her music, I’d be surprised if she heard any of it,” Dinah told Renee, but she squeezed her hand again as she said it, and Helena knew the words were meant for her. She tried to squeeze back, but the more she stared up, the more she felt the world spinning around her. She closed her eyes, and as soon as she felt Harley finish the last stitch, she drifted off to sleep. 

Her exhaustion didn’t stop the dreams. 

Every night it was slightly different. Sometimes she’d start in Italy, getting the shit beat out of her over and over and over again until she learned to fight back. Sometimes it was the bad stuff from After, the boys who made fun of her lack of skill at the start, the ones who mocked her smug reaction to shooting an arrow on target, because while she thought putting her archery lessons on display was impressive, they’d long since graduated from the childish bow and arrow. Sometimes she closed her eyes and all she saw was the scarlet fury that had spent over a decade festering inside her, and she woke up scared of how much she craved finding a release for it. 

It wasn’t alway bad. Some days she saw mostly good stuff. The days as a child where her mom used to braid her hair. Playing video games with her little brother in the basement, letting him win and not feeling bad about it. The boy in Italy who noticed that she never sang or danced with the rest of them, who found an old string base and taught her how to play so she could be a part of the group. Those days, though, waking up hurt more, because she knew that no matter how many times she closed her eyes, she could never truly go back.

Tonight was both different and the same. 

She sat at the bottom of the pool. Up above, she could hear her father yelling. He was always on the phone, always angry at someone, but down here it wasn’t so bad. Down here, she could see how long her breath would last, how long she could go without having to stick her head above water. Her long hair floated around her, and she liked the idea of it having a life of its own, moving with its own free will. 

The singing got her attention. It cut through the water, echoed against the walls and the pool floor, carried her up, higher and higher, until she left the pool and her house and the whole world behind. It took her up to the clouds, where she saw Dinah. She smiled at her, the one that made her feel weak inside in a way she didn’t mind. Helena noticed that she was herself again, the adult version, the version that got to know her. Dinah motioned for her to come sit, so she did, and they sat there on the clouds, looking down on the world below. The singing stopped, but it was replaced with a gentle kind of quiet. It was peaceful. It was comfortable. It was perfect.

“It won’t last.” She turned and saw Dinah staring right at her, a serious expression on her face. “You’re going to lose me just like everybody else. You’re going to lose all of us.”

She tried to speak, tried to protest, but the words died on her lips. She watched as the clouds slowly evaporated, as Dinah evaporated with them. She reached for her, but Dinah was ash and dust and Helena was painfully solid. The soft surface disappeared beneath her and she dropped, fell through the sky, through time itself. When she landed, she was twelve again, walking into her house for the very last time. She tried to scream but she couldn’t, she couldn’t do anything but watch as the bodies fell, all at once, motionless around her. She felt her parents’ weight on top of her, so heavy on her chest she could barely breathe. She saw red, had to close her eyes as someone’s blood dripped onto her face. She didn’t know whose it was, her mother’s or her father’s, but she knew it was warmer than both of them. 

Worst of all was the noise. The shots still echoed in her ears, ringing out even though she knew the shooting was over, knew because she still heard the shots but not the screaming. 

After a minute, the laughing started. She shut her eyes, begged God to kill her right there, because she didn’t want to hear it anymore, didn’t want to feel it anymore. Everything was too much, and she silently begged Him to let her go with them, to not leave her behind, but He was as silent as her family, and she knew then that He’d died right along with them. 

Suddenly an arm was on hers; an instant later she gasped as she woke up. She kept her body motionless but her eyes were frantic, wouldn’t stop moving until she remembered where she was. At home. On the couch. Bullet wound in her leg. Dinah next to her. 

Wait. She turned her head quickly at the realization and saw her kneeling next to her, hands still on her shoulder. They both noticed it at the same time, and Dinah moved them away quickly. 

“Sorry,” She said softly. “You were breathing really weird and your whole body was tense and I was worried you’d try and move or something and ruin your stitches.”

“Oh,” she said softly, her voice scratchy and hoarse. Dinah noticed, handed her a glass of water, and she chugged half of it before she added a weak “thanks.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?” She asked, and she said it so casually that Helena found that she was almost tempted to say yes. Instead, she shook her head. She wondered if Dinah would push it, would try and coerce information out of her, but she just nodded, and asked, “Does it hurt? Your leg?” 

“It’s nothing I can’t handle”. The memory of the dream was fading, replaced with reminders of what happened when she was awake. “How’s Cass?” She asked her. “Is she—I mean, did I—“

“She’s fine,” Dinah told her, and even when she was just talking there was something so soothing about her voice, something she almost couldn’t describe. “She’s just worried about you.”

“She shouldn’t worry,” Helena said quickly, “I’m fine.”

“She only worries because she cares about you,” Dinah said, and she could hear her surprise, her hesitation, in the inflection of her voice, heard it telling her to calm down. It didn’t work. 

“She shouldn’t.”

“Shouldn’t what? Shouldn’t care?” Helena didn’t answer, and she could feel the shift, knew that Dinah’s hesitation was turning into incredulity and confusion and pity. She hated that she knew what she was feeling. A person's emotions could be used to predict their actions, or so she’d been told. It was why she’d been forced to study them, to always know how to read someone’s face or body, how to hear words in their voice they didn’t say. But just because she knew what people felt didn’t mean she knew what to do with those feelings. Especially when they weren’t coming from an enemy she could fight.

“Helena,” Dinah’s voice snapped her out of her own head. “Why shouldn’t she care about you?”

She didn’t want to answer. She didn’t, but she was tired and angry and the fear from her dreams was lingering longer than it usually did, so she opened her mouth and confessed. “Because everyone who cares about me gets hurt.”

“That isn’t true,” Dinah said, and Helena felt the fear in her stomach growing, and she forced it down, because she knew that if she let it out, it would be anger who would rear its ugly head. It always was. 

“I won’t be the cause of any of her pain,” she managed to say. 

“You’re not.”

“But I _will_ be. It’s inevitable.”

“You love Cass, and she loves you, so how could you possibly hurt her?”

“She’ll get hurt _because_ she loves me! Don’t you get it?” She hated herself for raising her voice. Even if it only reached her normal speaking volume, it felt like she was screaming. 

“No, I don’t.” Dinah held her ground, shaking her head and staring straight at her. “Explain it to me.” 

“There’s a reason I was working alone before I met you guys,” she said, “and it’s not just because of my inability to play well with others. There’s no one left.”

“Helena,” Dinah said in that tone that she hated, the one that was all sympathy and pity. “What happened to your family, that’s not your fault.”

“Of course it’s not my fault.” She didn’t think Dinah was expecting that answer, but she didn’t give her much time to process it. “I killed the people whose fault it was. But it is a fact that every single person who’s ever loved me is dead. Except—“ she stopped herself, realized the confession that sat on her lips. 

“Except…” Dinah said, trying to prompt her to finish, and she wasn’t going to, she really wasn’t, but she made the mistake of looking in her eyes, and all of a sudden she was drowning all over again. 

“Except for you,” she said, then quickly added “and Cass. And Renee. And even Harley, even though she doesn’t always act like it. I know she does— I know you all do. I can tell.”

“So what, you’re just going to get us to stop caring about you?” Dinah asked. “That’s your big plan for keeping us alive?”

Helena just looked away. When she said it out loud, it didn’t sound as serious as it felt to her. Dinah had a way of exposing the illogical, and this was no exception. 

“Hey,” she said, and Helena felt a hand on her arm, and she turned to look at her. She wasn’t smiling, but there was something so gentle about the way she looked at her that it felt like she was. “I get it. I really do. But look at what we do, the line of work we’re in. Even if...even if something happens to one of us, it won’t be because we love you. I promise.”

“I—“ she hesitated. She knew that everything Dinah said made sense. She knew that, but she still saw the faces that haunted her at night, and she knew what it felt like to be completely alone in the world, and the thought of losing everything again…

“I just can’t risk it,” she finally told Dinah. “I can’t risk you. Any of you.”

Dinah was quiet for a long time. Helena just sat there, waiting for words she was sure would come. For her sake, she hoped Dinah would just accept it without making too much of a fuss. It would make everything easier. It would save her. Even if Helena would never truly get over it. 

“For the longest time,” Dinah finally said, her voice low and her eyes glued to her lap. “I only ever cared about one person. She was the only person in the world who loved me. And I lost her.” She looked up, waited until their eyes met before telling her, “I guess everyone who cares about me gets hurt, too. So really, it’s you who shouldn’t care about me.”

She felt as if time stopped. The thought of living a life where she couldn’t care about the woman in front of her was an impossible scenario. Dinah was everything that was good and beautiful in the world. She’d prepared herself to spend eternity loving her from afar. She’d do anything for her. She’d die for her, kill for her, but stop caring about her? 

“No.” She blurted out. 

“No?”

“No.”

Dinah waited a minute, before smiling slightly. “Okay,” She said. “Then how about we agree to care about each other? You put up with my pain, and I’ll put up with yours, and maybe we’ll find a way to protect each other from fate, or God, or whoever decided that we don’t get to be loved.”

“Okay,” She said softly. She was aware that they’d never talked this much before, at least not about feelings. Usually moments like this one freaked her out, but there was something about Dinah that made her feel calm. It was that calm feeling that made her ask, “What was that song you were singing? While Harley was pulling the bullet out?”

“Oh,” Dinah smiled, and if she could’ve seen better, if the only source of light hadn’t been the moon hanging right outside their window, Helena would have sworn the other woman was blushing. “Nothing. Just some song Cass wanted me to learn. She wants me to make these videos with her so she can get famous on some app or something. It’s not really what I’d usually sing, but I already told Cass I wouldn’t let her record me shattering stuff with my voice, so I figured this would hold her over for a minute.”

“You should sing like that more often,” she said softly. “It was beautiful.”

Dinah just smiled at her, and Helena felt herself melting. “You should get some sleep,” she told her. 

Helena nodded, but Dinah didn’t make any effort to move, and it was only then that she noticed the pillow and blanket on the floor next to her. “Why aren’t you sleeping in your room?” 

“Harley’s sleeping there.”

“Why isn’t she sleeping in my room?”

“Cass is in your room,” Dinah told her, and Helena didn’t get it, because she knew that Harley and Dinah and Harley and Cass had all shared beds before, and she tried to figure out why this time might be different, but before she could she heard Dinah laughing. “I volunteered to sleep out here,” she said. 

“Why?”

“I wanted to. In case you woke up and needed something, or you were in pain, or you know, something like this happened.” Helena felt the urge to look away, but she forced herself not to. “Besides, she continued with a smile, “based earlier today, we figured I had the best chance of not facing the wrath of Cranky Helena.”

“Oh, God,” she groaned, “I’m gonna have to apologize to Harley, aren’t I?”

Dinah laughed, trying to muffle the sound so as not to wake anyone up, and Helena couldn’t help but laugh a little too. She couldn’t remember a time where she’d laughed after a night like this one.

Their laughter died down, swallowed by the silence around them. Helena shifted, stared up at the ceiling, and she knew what she wanted to ask for, knew that normally she’d never actually do it, but there was something about the middle of the night that gave people bravery they didn’t have, so she kept her eyes glued to the ceiling and asked softly, “Can you sing it again?”

For fifteen seconds, Dinah didn’t make a sound, and Helena had an apology waiting on the tip of her tongue, but before she could blurt it out, she heard her. Her voice was soft, raspy almost, and quiet. She was singing just for her and they both knew it. This time, Helena listened to the words, listened and realized that the lyrics were a little bit tragic and a little bit desperate, that the music itself was low and high and everything in between, but when she closed her eyes, all she heard was Dinah. And she was beautiful. So, so beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> okay so i have so many fic ideas with this whole group and especially with this pairing but i keep struggling to get their voices down so like if i can get my shit together you might get to read more! leaving me kudos and comments will probably make that happen sooner! adding this to a series in an attempt to hold myself accountable but that plan already failed once so we'll see lol. 
> 
> also in my head the song she sings is "when the party's over" by billie eilish and that's also where the title is from. i left it vague tho so if u wanna insert a song u think fits them really well u can go right on ahead and do it (and let me know what song bc i need new music lol) also you can't tell me Cass isn't tic tok famous like she definitely is and she definitely uses the others to help make her famous
> 
> also if you wanna find me on tumblr im there @thanks--for--listening


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